James R. Linville, «Visions and Voices: Amos 7–9», Vol. 80 (1999) 22-42

The final chapters of Amos are read synchronically to highlight the relationship between the divine voice, which demands that its hearers prophesy (Amos 3,8), the voice of Amos, and those of other characters. Amos’ intercessions soon give way to entrapping word-plays and these are related to the rhetorical “traps” in Amos 1–2. Divine and prophetic speech defy the wish of human authority that they be silent. The figure of Amos eventually disappears from the reader’s view, but not before the prophet has been used as a focal point for the readers’ projections of themselves into the literary world of the text. As the scenes change from ultimate destruction to restoration, the readers appropriate the prophetic voice themselves, especially in the final verse which ends with a declaration of security uttered by “your God”.

its fulfilling event, the agent by which verbal statement becomes physical and historical event: substantive, real"⁴⁹. Still, I suspect that it is Amos, the narrator and spectator who is to actualise the destructive, self-fulfilling word; but if or how Amos set the word in motion, the text does not say⁵⁰. Indeed, the report of Amos may be for the benefit of the reader in the extra-textual world, who is hereby charged, at least symbolically, to wreak the destruction demanded.

        The response to the speech of God in the first four verses is the doxology, or hymnic passage, of vv. 5-6. Here the prophet is not introduced, or another speaker implied, except for the "my lord" in v. 5. The sole concern of the narrator is with the might and transcendence of God. The fire of the second vision is found here in YHWH’s power to touch the earth and make it melt, but there is no intercessor. Here, however, there is deliberate celebration of the name and attributes of YHWH, in direct defiance, it seems of the interjection of 6,10. YHWH’s touching of the earth seems to be the model for the imperative to strike the capitals of the temple. Amos 9,5 also recalls the shaking of the earth like the Nile’s rise and fall in 8,8. Yet, 9,6 contrasts the human temple with the divine one YHWH constructed linking heaven and earth. His control of the waters of the sea, to pour them over the land, recalls the flood and so surpasses the earlier references to the Nile.

        The content of the remaining block of text, Amos 9,7-15, is devoted to the words of God, which are now given without reference to, or implication of, a prophet or other speaker who needs symbolic objects or self-reference to accomplish his task. Ironically, that task has been reversed; it now speaks of an end to the punishment, an end for which Amos pleaded when he spoke with his own voice. This progression towards unity portrays a god whose anger is of such frightening proportions that it can only be expressed in images of total destruction, and yet who stops short of carrying it out. The assertions of 9,8-10, that the sinful will fall, suggest that the text has found a solution to the paradox of the transcendent power to destroy and the empathy of immanence. But, perhaps, this solution was implicit from the start: Amos declaring the mind of God with his own words "forgive" and "cease"; words heeded by God at the